What Mean These Stones?Native American and Colonial Placemaking along the Great RiverLecture by Christine DeLuciaSunday, July 19, 2015, 2 pm

Middle stretches of the Kwinitekw/Connecticut River, near an important fishing- and gathering-place used by Algonquian peoples for millennia. (Photo by Christine DeLucia)

The indigenous peoples of the Dawnland—the Native Northeast—maintained deep connections to place, over thousands of years, and frequently marked and told stories about meaningful sites. Nothing was “wilderness” here: the rivers, coasts, and lands were thoroughly inhabited and traveled parts of Native space. Northampton stands at a vital crossroads within these Native worlds, being a connective point along the Great River (Connecticut). The qualities that made it important for generations of Algonquian communities also attracted colonial settlers, and led to intense contestations and outright violence. All of these changes reshaped how diverse peoples interacted with memory-rich places.

In the 18th, 19th, and especially early 20th centuries, Euro-American antiquarians in the Valley and beyond began to install commemorative monuments and markers across the landscape. We still see many of these signs and stones by the roadsides and off the beaten path. They often relate particular historical narratives about the nature of Native-colonial relations, and what transpired in the aftermath of conflicts. Yet they tell only partial stories—and sometimes endeavor to erase or silence other ones. This talk puts these signs into wider contexts of “placemaking,” and unfolds lesser-told yet vital histories about human geographies that continue to resonate today.

A Euro-American commemorative stone in Squakheag/Northfield, Massachusetts, referencing an encounter between Native parties and colonial troops during King Philip's War." (Christine DeLucia photo)

Christine DeLucia

Bio:Christine DeLucia is an Assistant Professor of History at Mount Holyoke College. Her research and teaching examine Native American and colonial encounters in the Northeast/New England, particularly during the late 17th-century conflict of King Philip’s War. She traces how violence has continued to shape memory, land, identity, and politics for Native and settler communities. Her first book project, The Memory Frontier: Memorializing King Philip's War in the Native Northeast, is under contract with Yale University Press, for the Henry Roe Cloud Series on American Indians and Modernity. She also works on material culture, histories of collecting, and museums (large and small) as ongoing sites for dialogue and contestation. Her writings on place, indigenous histories, and colonialism have appeared in The Journal of American History, Studies in American Indian Literatures, Early American Studies, Re-thinking History, and Common-place. DeLucia received her Ph.D. in American Studies from Yale.